Immigration Liberals: Do You Really Support the Downtrodden
The biggest myth in the entire debate over illegal immigration is that there is a labor shortage in the U.S. which illegal aliens, who will work for lower wages and less benefits then U.S. citizens, must fill. There is no labor shortage at the lowest end of the job market. Wages for the less educated and unskilled have fallen, in real terms, over the past three decades. Basic economics teaches us that prices fall when supply rises. There has been a surplus of less-educated workers in the U.S. for many years.
Here's the irony: In nearly every case, liberals and the mainstream media feign concern for the poorest among us - U.S. citizens who are left behind by the job market ...
... except in the cases where big business argues there is a labor shortage: In those cases, the liberals inexplicably line up to support business owners against the workers.
There was a news item a couple months ago about a Georgia town impacted by a crackdown on illegal workers in that state:
The poultry plant has limped along with half its normal workforce. Crider increased its starting wages by $1 an hour to help recruit new workers.Stacie Bell, 23, started work canning chicken at Crider a week ago. She said the pay, $7.75 an hour, led her to leave her $5.60-an-hour job as a Wal-Mart cashier in nearby Statesboro. Still, Bell said she felt bad about the raids.
Interesting, right? When the illegals left, the company had to give citizens a better deal in order to get them to work there.
Well, here is the update. To our liberal commenters, I have just one question: WTF?
Felons on probation and homeless men have filled some of the poultry jobs left by illegal Mexican laborers deported in raids two months ago.About 40 convicted felons from the Macon Diversion Center are bused in each day to work at the Crider Poultry plant in Stillmore — the focus of the raids.
Additionally, 16 men from the Garden City Rescue Mission in Augusta have come to work in the plant. Several from the mission have become shift leaders, said Lavond Reynolds, director of men's housing for the mission.
"Compared to the attrition rate [at the plant] in general, these guys have really stuck so far," Reynolds said. The mission might send another 15 soon ...
The Mexican population in Stillmore has plummeted since immigration officials first visited the Crider plant in May, town residents said. Immigration agents estimated that 700 workers were using fraudulent IDs. The company began checking documents and confronting employees. Many were fired and hundreds of illegal immigrants left town on their own throughout the summer.
Then, over Labor Day, federal agents rounded up and deported more than 125 illegal immigrants working at the Crider plant or living in Emanuel and surrounding counties.
That left Crider with a big labor gap, and finding workers to fill the jobs has been a challenge. Among the efforts and changes at the plant since the raids:
-The company outsourced 250 jobs in its raw deboning operation to Alabama.
-Some processing has slowed because of the downturn in the work force.
-Crider has turned to an outside company to hire about 100 workers to clean the plant each night.
-The company raised starting wages by about 40 cents and now offers attendance bonuses to new hires. Before, it took a year to be eligible for the extra pay. (Starting base pay is $6 an hour; most workers earn more through bonuses and overtime.)
-The company is spending more on hiring and training as turnover is high among new employees.
For instance, Crider advanced money to house the homeless men from the mission in trailers and to turn on their utilities. The company also pays to bus state probationers from Macon each day and is busing workers from surrounding communities ...
Pastor Ariel Rodriguez drives around Stillmore, explaining what happened to each of the Mexican families that used to live in trailers and apartments.
"The majority of people have gone to Kentucky," he said. They knew a priest who used to live in the area and followed him up there, Rodriguez said. Other residents have gone back to Mexico.
At least one local businessman said his business has gone up since the raids. The churn of new folks applying and working at Crider has brought new customers to Mighty Mike's Hot Stop gas station and convenience store in town.
"They come in here and shop," said manager Willie Gordon. "Our inside sales have gone up $3,000 per week since the raids."
It's been a mixture of new clientele. But Gordon, who is African-American, attributes a good part of the increase to more black workers coming into town. Gordon notes: "You gotta be legal now."
To my liberal friends, I say: Read that report again. Note how it reads like the reporter was sourcing a press release from the Crider corporation.
Then, tell me why it is even remotely logical for you to support the Crider corporation against the interests of poor and disadvantaged American citizens. (Many of these are African-American men).
Look at what is happening there. Illegal aliens were chased out of town, and the corporation is now forced to raises wages and benefits to attract legal workers. In order to fix their labor shortage, it sure looks like the company may need to increase wages and benefits a lot more. Disadvantaged Americans now have opportunities to become self-sufficient.
Again, WTF? What got me involved in this issue was learning that illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. I met people who could state how their lives and livelihoods had suffered. Wages fell, jobs disappeared, neighborhoods were sold out. Most of this occurred as a direct result of companies finding a way to pad their profits by ratcheting down their salary budgets. This all took place amid cheers by business owners, chambers of commerce, and traditional Republican supporters.
While giving out flyers for HelpSaveLoudoun at a Republican event recently - flyers noting that illegal immigration was bad for "American workers" - I watched a number of attendees crumple it up in disgust. The pro-business contingent has little sympathy for any advocacy for "workers," and I am accustomed to this response from that part of the GOP coalition.
But I wonder, where the hell are the Democrats?!
Frankly, I think many of them are grossly misinformed. They buy the line there is a shortage of workers hook, line and sinker, without stopping to ask why business owners are the only ones selling that particular line.
I'm willing to admit I've been wrong on things. I hope some of our liberal friends will be willing to admit they've been wrong on the effects of illegal immigration.
UPDATE: This is, I think, an important enough topic to be discussed on the main page, so I am going to elevate comments to new posts. To our amnesty guys and resident bloggers: Go ahead and start new posts if you want and just link back to this one. I think there is a realignment in the air. I'm willing to bend. Are you?
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Unlike what the Wall Street Journal would have us believe, there are no jobs that "Americans refuse to do." At the right price, we would all gladly pick strawberries. But employers who pay under-market wages to illegal Mexicans have no reason to raise wages to lure us. Stop illegal immigration and watch wages (and prices) rise.
Joe, the reaction you received to papers about "workers" may not have been a cigar-chomping moneybags one at all.
There have been beaucoup union dollars in Loudoun since they set up a Loudoun PAC for the Kaine and Poisson campaigns.
There are now entrenched union dollars in NoVA politics, and I get something in my mailbox every week on the Fairfax border from Working America, the AFL/CIO PAC who "cares about working families".
Stay tuned for a challenge to VA's right to work status. The union dollars are going to flow hot and fast here in the interest of the continued "bluing" of VA.
I believe that if the minimum wage were to be raised, there would be more people applying for the jobs at the lower end of the scale. Americans can't afford to work for such low pay. Immigrants make it work by supporting each other in the way of many people living in the same household. Stop the corporations and small businesses alike from paying these ridiculously low wages and we will see an upward trend. I myself am on unemployment right now and I have been looking for a job which will support my family of 5. It's not that I won't do the jobs the Mexicans won't do, it's that there is no way I can support my family on what they get paid. Make the pay equal to cost of living and the rest will follow.
Great post, Joe. This country was founded on the rule of law. When law does not rule, humans will be petty tyrants. The labor situation exemplifies this. When corporations ignore the law without consequence, everyone suffers. When corporations are forced to abide by the law, wages go up.
Rudi misses the point. If you remove VA's right to work laws and raise the minimum wage to "the cost of living." (whatever that is), more companies will take the risk of hiring illegals because there is an artificial wage "floor" and many people are willing to work for a price below that floor. If, instead, you enforce the current immigration laws, you reduce the number of people willing to work for next to nothing, while living 20 to an apartment and sending half their earnings south of the border. With those folks gone, as the Crider example demonstrates, companies have an incentive to raise their wages.
Forced unionization is bad for the economy. Artificial price floors and ceilings are bad for the economy. Republicans know that. But its time Republicans realized what Joe is pointing out. Feeding big business at the public trough is bad for the economy too. It's way past time to STOP looking the other way when big business breaks the law. Instead of a complicated tax structure with special breaks for favored industries, it's time to lower taxes for everyone. Let's remember what our economic engine is: the force of human creativity and potential. Let's unleash that force by lowering taxes on millions of potential entrepreuners and their future employees WHILE we enforce current immigration laws.
Remember that old supply / demand curve. A little graph actually does demonstrate how life works. We ignore it at our peril.
Jerry,
It isn't true that Mexicans are paid less for harvesting crops. Jobs like picking berries tend to be paid by the amount you pick, not what country you're a citizen of.
Any one of us can pick up our bushel basket and head over to the local berry patch. We don't because the compensation isn't worth the trouble. What's your "right price" for picking berries? Could a farmer pay everyone involved in a harvest that price and still keep the price of the berries low enough that people would buy them?
LC:
I always get a kick out of people saying "this country was founded on the rule of law" For one thing, people only say this when they're talking about immigration, and the fact is that this country began with a revolution fought by what we would today call an insurgency of illegal enemy combatants (the original minutemen)
also, Joe,
I forgot the obligatory CIS-is-a-lousy-source-which-exists-to -distribute-Chris-Simcox's-essays-and-present-awards-to-Lou-Dobbs-under-a-guise-of-intellectual-honesty clause. so there it is.
Stay Puft,
Re-read your history -- original sources, not the revisionist stuff.
The Americans, or rebels, if you prefer, insisted that the Lex Rex doctrine established in English common law since the Magna Charta, was being violated by young King George. They were not being treated as English citizens. If the law binds all and all are equal before it, then the King does not have the option of treating some subjects differently than others. Thus, the American revolution was a conservative revolution -- not against the law but for it. This principle has descended to us from them. For those who take it seriously, rule of law is not a trite phrase fit to particular situations but an over-riding principle that informs our policy perspective.
You remind us of Christian charity to our neighbors to the South. And, as a Christian, I gladly use the resources God has given me to help others, including my Latin American neighbors. But as a citizen who understands the rule of law, I know that the responsibility of the government under the law is first to people who live under that law. While I have a personal duty of charity to those from every nation, my government (and I as its agent, whether as a voter or an elected) do not have the same responsibility to the people of Mexico as to the people of the United States. Likewise, the government of Mexico does not have the same responsibility to the people of the US as to its own citizens.
This differentiation does not answer all questions but it does help with them. It does tell us how we can serve first to protect our own people in time of war, acting in our national interest, and also seek the universal good of liberty for all peoples.
well, LC, that was my own take on things, not something I read. but I think there's a good discussion on immigration going on, so I'm going to refrain from delving headlong into a conversation about the legal justifications for the revolutionary war. suffice it to say that the next time I hear a conservative refer to revisionist history I'm gonna puke.
yes, the government's first concern is with it's citizens. What if the best way to serve those citizens and America's interests is through a concerted campaign aimed at developing the economy of another country? We bought a similar argument when they told us a regime change in Iraq was vital to our national security and American interests. You can think of this as the same thing, only with less of the depleted uranium.
In a sense, the development of Mexico's economy could be viewed as a national security issue. Look at how difficult it is to patrol the border right now. Imagine if 99% of the people crossing over could find decent work in Mexico instead? Then the only people who would bother taking the risk would be people smuggling stuff & etc. And fewer people crossing would take some pressure off the border patrol as well.
My question to you is why not do this? What's the alternative, really? Wall ourselves off from the world? building a giant wall would only force the immigrants to use boats instead?
I don't know who this marshmallow-for-brains character is but he obviously has a learning disability.
I didn't write that Mexicans are paid LESS for the same job. What I said was, there are jobs (whether paid by the hour, the year, or by the bushel basket) that are priced so low, only illegals will hire on. Pay $75 a bushel for those strawberries instead of 75 cents and watch what happens.
Jerry:
We take it as a given that liberals in general have learning disabilities, so there is no need to point it out in Puffy's case. He is, at least, generally civil.
whatever, Jack-for-brains
Jerry, don't mind Jack. He's just fishing for Fox News Contributor position
you said, "employers...pay under-market wages to illegal Mexicans" I took that to imply that they would pay higher wages to US citizens. I mistook your phrasing, you missed the larger point: Farmers can't pay more.
read all about it:
http://www.novatownhall.com/blog/2006/11/we_cant_ignore_agriculture_fea.php
"Then, tell me why it is even remotely logical for you to support the Crider corporation against the interests of poor and disadvantaged American citizens. (Many of these are African-American men)." -Joe
Are you trying to start a race war?
The tryptophan is wearing off and I'm just starting to wake up to the fact there seems to be a lot of illegal talk going on here and some pretty entertaining spam.
Good post, I'm a sucker for this one. I don't know how you've manage to place all my own, personally most valuable chess pieces on the board so it looks like they're fighting with each other but. . .oh wait, I forgot, I'm learning disabled. It just means its going to take me a little more time. . .